Health Like A Boss, LLC

08/11/2026

This one deserves to be shared for the right reasons. Destany "Sky" Pete, a Duck Valley high school student, watched cancer and diabetes rise among her Shoshone and Paiute people, and saw a link others were missing: as her community lost its traditional foods, its modern health crises grew.

So she brought her ancestral knowledge into the laboratories of Boise State University to study the chokecherry, a berry long central to her people's diet. The detail that mattered was the method, she prepared the traditional chokecherry pudding, "toishabui," exactly as her ancestors did, carefully crushing the berry seeds, where modern shortcut versions fell short. In the lab, her authentic preparation slowed and halted the growth of aggressive uterine cancer cells within 24 hours, surprising the researchers and earning her First Grand Prize over hundreds of competitors.

Here's the honest context, because it matters: this is an early lab finding, cancer cells in a dish, not a treatment tested in people. It's the exciting first step that opens the door to further research, not a cure. But that is exactly how science begins, with a great question and a surprising result. And that's what makes her achievement so remarkable: a teenager honored her heritage, pointed science toward something worth studying, and earned her place in a university lab.

Follow us for the science, and the people, quietly changing what we know.

Source:

Manning, S. S. (2017, June 12). Bringing science and culture together with chokecherry pudding. Indian Country Today.

08/11/2026

A study published in the Journal of Food Science (2015) investigated the anti-cancer activity of a polyphenol-rich extract from Hibiscus sabdariffa leaves against A375 human melanoma cells. Melanoma is the least common but most fatal form of skin cancer. Researchers found that Hibiscus leaf polyphenolic (HLP) extract, which was particularly rich in epicatechin gallate (ECG) and other polyphenols, induced melanoma cell death through apoptosis and autophagy. The researchers observed caspase cleavage, regulation of Bcl-2 family proteins and activation of the Fas/FasL pathway, all of which are involved in controlling programmed cell death.

The Hibiscus extract also increased levels of the autophagy-associated proteins ATG5, Beclin-1 and LC3-II and induced autophagic cell death in the melanoma cells. The researchers concluded that the observed anti-cancer activity of the extract was partly attributable to ECG and suggested that Hibiscus leaf polyphenols have potential for development as an anti-melanoma agent. Importantly, these findings came from experiments on human melanoma cells in the laboratory, not from a clinical trial in people, so the study does not establish Hibiscus as a treatment or cure for melanoma.

PMID: 25694272

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